Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Working Paper & Research Proposal Competition

Who: Full time faculty and doctoral students at the University of Tennessee are eligible. Submissions from doctoral students are judged separately from faculty submissions.

Purpose: The primary goal of this competition is to promote and reward high quality, impactful research in entrepreneurship and innovation that will lead to top tier journal publications. The secondary goal is to foster a community of scholars from across the university who focus at least some of their research attention on the important societal goal of increasing entrepreneurial and innovation success. The final goal is to raise the visibility of UT entrepreneurship and innovation research within academic and practitioner communities.

Scope of Topics: Submissions relating to any topics within entrepreneurship and innovation research are encouraged including research focusing on opportunity recognition, decision-making, new venture creation, founder succession, product design and rapid prototyping, technology transfer and technology commercialization, evaluation of programs designed to improve the success rates of entrepreneurial ventures (e.g., incubators, accelerators, government and NGO funding), venture funding, and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Research that focuses on technology entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship in under-represented populations is especially encouraged. The listed topics are not meant to be exhaustive; research on other related topics is also encouraged. Submissions by teams of faculty and doctoral students across disciplines are encouraged.

Categories and Awards:

Doctoral Student Research Proposal: $800 (multiple awards may be awarded)

Doctoral Student Working Paper: $1,300 (multiple awards may be awarded)

Faculty Research Proposal: $1,000 (multiple awards may be awarded)

Faculty Working Paper: $5,000 (one award may be awarded)

Special Grants for Research Expenses: These grants may be used to buy datasets, or to collect data: (Up to $5,000 may be awarded to purchase or create datasets that are made available for use by faculty and graduate students. Requests for smaller amounts are encouraged.)

In addition to the cash awards, winners will receive opportunities to present their research to the ACEI Research Council for constructive feedback. Some winners may be chosen to present to select entrepreneurs for feedback on the practical relevance of their research.

Abstracts of winning proposals and working papers will be highlighted on the ACEI Focus on Research webpage.

Submission Guidelines:

All submissions should be accompanied by the author(s)’ list of prior publications, conference presentations, prior ACEI awards, and work submitted to conferences and journals in the publication pipeline not to exceed 2 pages per author. Those with extensive publication histories should limit their list of works to the last five years. An individual may submit up to 3 submissions across all categories. Cash awards will be awarded to the first author of any submission to be divided as s/he sees fit within the team.

Research Proposals: Research that has not yet been presented at a conference outside of UT or submitted to a journal or other publication outlet may be submitted. Proposals that were funded in prior years will only be funded again if substantial changes and progress have been made on the research. Research proposals should clearly identify the research question(s), theoretical background and prior research, research model, hypotheses (if appropriate), methodology including sample, data collection and analysis methods, expected contributions to research and practice, and expected timeline to complete the research. A cover page should identify the project title, the researchers, their affiliation, and contact information, target journal(s) for the research, and which category the proposal should be judged within. The cover page should also include a maximum 200 word abstract of the proposed research. Abstracts should be written for a thoughtful practitioner audience (e.g., educated entrepreneurs, policy makers, venture capitalists) and should avoid technical jargon. To compete in the doctoral student category, the first author must be a doctoral student. The body of a research proposal submission should be a maximum 5 pages, single-spaced, 12 pt. font. Up to 5 additional pages may be provided for references, cover page, and exhibits.

Working Papers: Working papers that are not currently under publication review (or accepted for publication) may be submitted including papers that have been presented or accepted for presentation at academic conferences. Working papers resulting from prior proposal grants are encouraged. Working papers should clearly identify the research question(s), theoretical background and prior research, research model, hypotheses (if appropriate), methodology including sample, data collection and analysis methods, contributions to research and practice, and target journal. A cover page should identify the paper title, the researchers, their affiliation, contact information, and which category the working paper should be judged within. The cover page should also include a maximum 200 word abstract. Abstracts should be written for a thoughtful practitioner audience (e.g., educated entrepreneurs, policy makers, venture capitalists) and should avoid technical jargon. To compete in the doctoral student category, the first author must be a doctoral student. Maximum 40 pages, double-spaced, 12 pt. font, inclusive of all appendices, exhibits, tables, cover page, and references.

Special Grants for Research Expenses: A pool of $5,000 will be reserved to provide funding to proposal writers who request concrete research expenses such as to buy a dataset or to collect data. This grant will be paid against actual invoices and will not be a cash payment. If requesting these funds, please include a short description of the funds needed, the nature of the data or other expenses, and a statement about how the expense might benefit other entrepreneurship researchers in the university, for example, that the data will be made available within 6 months to all faculty and doctoral student researchers within UT.

Judging Panel: Academic judges will be drawn from the ACEI Research Council of Faculty who will rate submissions in terms of importance and novelty of the work, theoretical and methodological contributions, and quality and likelihood of publication in top tier journals. The ACEI Executive Director, Lynn Youngs, will rate submissions in terms of practical contributions based on evaluation of abstracts.

Academic judges will be excused from rating proposals submitted by themselves or their doctoral students.

Past Winners: Abstracts of previously funded research may be viewed here.